Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

I know this is going to surprise those of you used to my usual output of posts, but I’m suffering from writer’s block. The last few weeks have been so chaotic, my opportunities to write so random and infrequent, and the news of the world so overwhelming that, now that I finally have time to sit down and write, I’m frozen. After sitting her for a while, I decided that the best thing to do would be to clear my spindle. I know some of the contents are outdated, but they may still be of interest, and getting through the backlog may help spark my dormant (I hope, rather than extinct) yen to write.

Obama fiddles with Iran while the Middle East burns and Israel is forced to go it alone

All eyes may be on Obama and his desperation to get a deal with Iran (despite the fact that, in a sane world, the smaller, weaker, poorer Iran would be desperate to get a deal with Obama), but the fact is that the entire Middle East is a flaming disaster thanks to Obama’s habit of alternately meddling in and abandoning Middle Eastern affairs.

Bret Stephens explains that, thanks to Obama’s policies, it is now impossible for Israel to walk back the way in which he’s abandoned and isolated it:

Netanyahu abandons platitudes and says what need to be said: He will not be bullied into a two-state solution as long as the Palestinians are dedicated to Israel’s annihilation and the rest of the Middle East is going up in flames.

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Netanyahu might have had in mind David Goldman’s article about Israel’s future when he drew that line. Goldman says that when one combines Muslims’ falling demographics and Israel’s growing demographics with the complete collapse of nations and the possibility of endless war in the Middle East, little, besieged Israel will be the last man standing.

I’ve noted before that fewer people have died in Israel under Hamas’s attack than were killed in Chicago in a single week. According to the Left, this is a bad thing — and by “bad thing” I don’t mean that gun-controlled Chicago residents are dying like flies; I mean that Israel has the temerity to defend her citizens effectively against hundreds of rocket attacks.

To the drive-by media’s surprise, legal immigrants in this country aren’t thrilled to see their economic standing diluted and their patience in complying with the law rendered worthless by the influx of illegals:

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There’s a metaphor in here somewhere. See if you can come up with a good one after watching these dogs bark at each other through a fence that, mere inches away, is completely open:

William Jacobson pulls together evidence showing that the Boycott Divest Sanction movement is motivated, not by tears for the Palestinians, but by the usual toxic antisemitism from Muslims and Leftists.

This day has offered an embarrassment of riches when it comes to interesting news and good posts. Without further ado….

This goes to my earlier point about the degradation of black culture at white elitist hands: Towson University’s all-black Team won a national debating championship using incoherent babble sprinkled with obscenities (including the “n” word) and rap. What they did wasn’t debating, it was performance art, since it’s apparent that the participants actually speak very good English. The judges manifestly rewarded them, not for their debating skills (there were none), but for the art of ghetto culture. The brilliant and uplifting contributors to the Harlem Renaissance would be appalled.

Millennials have bought into Leftist thinking hook, line, and sinker — and small wonder, because their political view basically boils down to “free things,” for you, for me, for everyone. None of them seems to have given a thought to the fact that someone has to pay for those “free” things.

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I wrote earlier about the Democrats’ push to position the mayor of San Antonio to be the next vice president, never mind that, in 2016, his political experience will have been a decorative stint in meaningless “political” job, followed by a couple of years at HUD. Seth Mandel thinks there’s a logic behind this, and it’s not just identity politics. Instead, its bureaucrat politics: The Democrats envision a bureaucratic state, with the White House a mere figurehead. Read his post. It explains the idea very well.

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Thirty-four years later, I’m still embarrassed that I voted for the antisemitic Jimmy Carter. Now I’ve got something new to be embarrassed about: A little over a year ago, I included in one of my “just because” music posts Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” I noted that it was vulgar and obscene, but I still liked a song that seemed to tell teenagers to get over their designer labels and obsession with products as part of social status. It turns out that Macklemore makes Carter look philosemitic. He chose to perform that song in a costume that was a dead ringer for the worst Nazi propaganda. Even more despicable was the fact that this man who claims exquisite sensitivity towards the oppressed (if they’re gay) and towards all faiths (apparently except for Jews) asserted that he was just pretending to be a witch with a beard.

To no one’s surprise, all the usual shriekers about racism (those savaging Sterling’s senile maunderings, for example) have been remarkably quiet. The only push back came from Seth Rogen, who did it brilliantly. I fear, though, that Seth Rogen alone is not enough. It just goes to show (again), that those on the side of true tolerance are bad at screaming loudly when offended.

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Despite Macklemore’s despicable behavior and the strange hush that followed it, I am getting the feeling that people of good will are starting to realize that, if they don’t push back, America’s decline will be swift and final. The movement at UCLA to delegitimize Israel through the BDS movement, rather than being met with mere hand-wringing, is instead facing growing opposition.

One of the worst things about fighting an ideologically-driven enemy seeking totalitarian dominance is that, to a certain extent, to defeat that enemy, you must become like that enemy. You cannot ever rest, and you must fight on every front, both clean fights and dirty ones.

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And just so you know, no matter the topic, Obama’s really angry. He’s not actually going to do anything, but he will emote for you:

The single most effective opposition to the movement to turn Israel into a pariah state is for people actually to go to Israel. Once there, they see that it is a free, dynamic, pluralist society, that is deeply respectful of human rights. This explains the newest outbreak of antisemitism in America’s universities and churches: marginalizing people who dare to see Israel for themselves. Over at Commentary Blog, there are two stories about just that, one coming out of UCLA, and the other coming out of the Presbyterian Church.

Traditionally, both Jews and conservatives have shied away from fights. The time to shy away is over. As Ben Shapiro showed when he decimated boycott/divest/sanction supporters at UCLA, every time the Left hits out, conservatives must hit back twice as hard and twice as often.

One of the things Charles Martel and I talked about yesterday at lunch was the fact that Leftist are perpetual adolescents. This is obvious in a lot of ways: they’re short-sighted, short-fused, emotional, deeply invested in shallow takes on serious issues, given to ill-conceived hero-worship, etc. The other thing that they have in common with adolescents is their laser-like focus on their personal needs.

I think I’ve mentioned here before a book I once read about parenting techniques to use on challenging teens. Eighteen years after the fact, what has stick with me is the author’s point about a teen’s focus versus an adult’s focus. Adults focus on lots of things: a job, a household, the children’s needs, an elderly parent’s needs, community work, and sometimes even their own needs. Teens, however, focus only on one thing, which is their emotional need at that specific moment. While you’re juggling myriad responsibilities, both temporal and intellectual, your teen is thinking “mall” or “party dress” or “Cancun.”

In the political world, conservatives, like adults, tend to think in terms of responsibilities, while Leftists, the adolescents, think in terms of emotional needs. Responsibilities place demands on you; emotional needs place demands on everything else.

What this means is that, if the Leftist’s emotional need is to destroy Israel, he will tackle it with the same ferocity and single-mindedness one sees in the teen demanding that trip to the mall. If one argument fails, he will shift effortlessly to the next one and then to the one after that. Meanwhile, if you, the adult/conservative, have won the first argument, you’re not automatically gearing up to defend against any subsequent arguments. Instead, you’re foolishly thinking that the issue is over and that you can move on to your next responsibility. Silly you.

In the battle between teen and parent, the book’s author suggested acknowledging the teen’s argument without ever engaging: “I understand that all your friends are going to the mall, but in our house, the rule is that you can’t go to the mall on a week night.” “I understand that you feel this is unfair, but the rule is that you can’t go to the mall on a week night.” You’re Teflon and, faced with this consistent, impregnable line of defense, the teen eventually runs out of arguments, especially because you won’t engage him substantively.

Unfortunately, in the real world, the mature conservative cannot use this Teflon approach with the adolescent Leftist. That’s because the battle isn’t just being fought between the two combatants; it’s being fought on the public stage, with the winner taking all in public opinion. Just as is the case in a trial against the lawyer from Hell, no matter how stupid or unprincipled his arguments are, you have to challenge every one of them on the merits because you’re not really arguing with him at all. Instead, you’re performing for the judge.

The same is true in politics. No matter how heated the argument between two individuals seem, they’re not really fighting each other. They are, instead, are performing for the American public.

There are a lot of things I miss about being young. Today, I miss the ability to sleep even if the house if falling down around me. I can’t do that anymore. I somehow lost the sleeping knack when I had babies and I’ve never gotten it back. Sleep seems incredibly distant lately. Between my knee and my shoulder, both of which refuse to quiet down at night, I’m feeling grumpy and disconnected today. This will therefore be a short round-up.

Jamie Glasov looks at Danielle Dimacali’s insane (a word I use in its literal sense) meltdown when UCLA just barely rejected the BDS movement. He wonders if any of the atrocities committed against Jews because they are Jews would have moved her too. It’s powerful and painful stuff, and makes quite clear just how deranged the anti-Israel movement really is.

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Peter Wehner has a good point about politics: those of us who are most deeply committed are often the worst strategists because we have no perspective about what moves the ordinary American voter. This isn’t a Left/Right thing; it’s a “connecting to voters” thing. Now that I’ve written the preceding sentence, I can see that Obama won — twice — because he and his side had a better sense of which “voter buttons” to push. It helps, of course, that Democrats weren’t constrained by such old-fashioned notions as truth and decency, but the fact remains that McCain and Romney never connected with voters. I can’t help believe that,despite the despicable stuff coming from the Democrats, Reagan, with his sunny good humor and folksy ability to simplify complex ideas and relate them directly to voters, would have connected easily.

Kevin Williamson was adopted, a personal matter he brings up solely because he’s very concerned about a push across America to open previously closed adoptions. Being Kevin Williamson, he makes an excellent case about the right to privacy. Reading his article led me to a different thought. The Left is all about severing family ties, so that the state becomes all-powerful in people’s lives. It’s therefore funny that, in this single area, the state is all about forcing family ties where people don’t want them to exist.

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VDH has a great one about the Left’s war on science. The Left supported science when it dovetailed with Leftist ideology. Now that this dovetailing has ended (yes, life does begin before birth; no, California’s devastating drought has more to do with overpopulation and environmentalist kibosh’s on new reservoirs than it does with global warming), the Left has become defiantly anti-science — but, being the Left, it masks this defiance under the mantle of science. Always remember, Leftists are Humpty-Dumpty: they determine what words mean.

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And finally, Keith Koffler writes the scathing post Obama deserves for planning his third luxury vacation in as many months — a plane that Obama fears will be derailed because of that pesky Putin. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson’s campaign was “He kept us out of war.” If Obama in the next few days manages to lay to rest America’s involvement in Ukraine, his personal motto will be “I kept us out of war so that I could go on vacation.”

Sometimes things are so perfectly timed, you know that they were meant to be. Such is the case with three things that crossed my radar yesterday when I finally got a chance to spend a few hours at my computer. The first is a wonderful image from Michal:

The second is an article about legislators who have finally had enough of the BDS movement, at least insofar as it seeks to make Israel an academic pariah. The goal is to boycott the boycotters — that is, to put such pressure on those who would boycott Israel that the boycotters themselves must back off.

One of the BDS movement’s greatest assets is the fact that its every success gets massive media coverage while its failures (ScarJo excepted) are largely ignored. That’s why anyone following the news in recent weeks would probably conclude that boycott, divestment, and sanctions were rapidly gaining ground. Yet in reality, BDS has suffered several major failures lately–and some of these failures bode ill for its future.

These two reports about BDS failures are not grounds for complacency. As we know, the Left has the tenacity of a pit bull. It never lets go. Ever. If you’d like to help de-fang the movement, StandWithUs is as good an organization as one can find for that purpose.

Rob Miller writes wonderful things at his blog JoshuaPundit. Excitingly, he’s now expanded his reach and will be a contributor at the Times of Israel. He’s off to a rip-roaring start there, with a piece about the way BDS thinking (the antisemitic “Boycott, Divest, Sanction” movement) is so insidious that it’s principles now inform statements from people who have no idea what they’re saying.

As for my claim that the BDS movement is antisemitic, I’ll abandon that position when there are BDS movements against China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Malaya, Venezuela, huge chunks of Africa, etc. — in other words, when there are BDS movements against other nations that have totalitarian governments that overtly oppress people within their own borders, let alone in land that they won in a series of defensive wars.

Yesterday, I suggested that you get a good laugh by watching a slobberingly loving Obamacare rap. Today, I insist that you watch this powerful, hypnotic video about the manifest antisemitism that drives the “Boycott, Divest and Sanction” (or “BDS”) movement against Israel, the world’s only Jewish nation:

And if you’re feeling so inclined, you might want to make a donation to Stand With Us or CAMERA, both of which exist to fight back against the canards leveled against Israel.

We should all be so clever when we see someone parading around demand that people Boycott, Divest, and Sanction the only liberal democracy (in the classic sense of those words) in the entire Middle East.

I’ve always liked the Pet Shop Boys, an 80s band that was part of the background soundtrack to my early 20s. I especially liked this song:

The Pet Shop Boys just went up enormously in my estimation by taking a principled stand against the fundamentally antisemitic Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement against Israel, whose proponents pretend Israel is the new South Africa. Although, I agree with Evelyn Gordon that Neil Tennant, the half of the duo who wrote the post, is off the mark in claiming the Israel engages in”crude and cruel” policies, I also agree with her that the core statement — that Israel is nothing like South Africa — is an important one and cannot be sufficiently emphasized:

I don’t agree with this comparison of Israel to apartheid-era South Africa. It’s a caricature. Israel has (in my opinion) some crude and cruel policies based on defence; it also has universal suffrage and equality of rights for all its citizens both Jewish and Arab. In apartheid-era South Africa, artists could only play to segregated audiences; in Israel anyone who buys a ticket can attend a concert. Neil x

I wish more entertainers had the moral courage to call out the BDS movement for what it is: a hopelessly biased cause that tries to frame the only true liberal democracy in the Middle East (and it is a true liberal democracy by any measure, not just Middle Eastern) as a tyrannical apartheid state.

(As an aside, although I like them, I had no idea that Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are “the most successful duo in UK music history.” Maybe part of why they’ve done so well is because they’ve got their heads screwed on the right way.)